7.5 MONTHS Part One: Jailbait, Revisited

April 12, 2003. Lauderdale, MN

I’m in the shower when I hear the pounding. I initially think it has to be the people upstairs fucking around, maybe pounding some nails in. It continues. I finally shut the shower off and listen more closely. Somebody is pounding on my door hard enough to shake the walls. Panic-stricken, I throw some shorts and a T-Shirt on and jog to the front door.

“Who is it?” I inquire.

“Police department, open up.”

When I open the door I hardly have any time to register the fact that I know both of them, before the smaller one says “We’re gonna take care of this warrant one way or another.” He’s the one who pulled me over and let me go because I was so close to home. He’s a nice guy.

Oh god. Parking tickets and a driving after suspension. The big cop tries to placate me. This one helped me when the pipe burst in my bedroom last February. He’s a nice guy, too. He explains that if I can make the payment right then they will send me some info to set up my court date later. Since I am recently unemployed that option doesn’t bode well. I have exactly $1 in my wallet and it’s all the money I have in the world.

When I explain that to them the smaller guy rushes forward, grabs my arm and says, “Then I guess you’re going downtown.” He tries to haul me out the door, bare feet and all. I plead with them to at least let me put shoes on, it’s only minor traffic violations after all. For some reason, I know that they both recognize me and know that I know them at that moment. They look vaguely disappointed that they can’t play the good cop/bad cop games with me anymore. I invite them to wait inside while I put different clothes on. The big cop comments on the new carpeting and how much better the place looks than it used to. I thank him. They both sit on my couch and play with my cat Blaxan. As an after-thought I grab my cell phone. I know from very personal experience that they will give me all of my money back in the form of a check and I will have no way to cash it to make a phone call.

They handcuff me right in front of my apartment building. My neighbors look on, horrified, thinking: “Oh my god. I KNEW him. We passed in the hallway all the time. Just proves you never can tell.”

They let me call Math-girl on my cell phone. I surmise that she may have the $200 cash that might get me out of this. She does, but she can’t make it for another 45 minutes. They tell me that they can’t wait. I’m going downtown again.

The big cop tries to make idle chatter as we head for the Castle of Greyskull. He mentions something about how he just got back from a road trip. He helped his brother-in-law drive from California all the way back to Minnesota, blah-blah-blah. It’s a nice day out and I probably won’t see daylight again for some time. In fact, the last time this happened I was MIA for ten hours. This one might last a whole weekend if Math-girl doesn’t come through.

Later that same day. Downtown, Murderapolis.
At least I don’t have to worry about going to work on Monday, I think. That’s the one and only consolation of being unemployed. Time is meaningless. Weekends and weekdays drone together.

We head beneath a very space-age looking building. A state-of-the-art voice-controlled garage door goes up. I have the vague feeling that I am being volunteered for some hideous science experiment. This is not the place I was last time. These people are almost smiling, and it is a very clean, antiseptic looking place.

They take my shoes and belongings and I say goodbye to the $1.00 in cash I have in my wallet. They feel me up as they frisk me, and I suddenly feel very short and very embarrassed as they shove me into an empty mostly-glass room that is long, narrow and bright and smells suspiciously like a dentist‘s office. It’s barely wide enough for the stone bench I sit on. It creeps me out that they lock me in. Just for the hell of it, I try both doors. A guard eyes me warily and I roll my eyes. “Don’t let the mad driving-after-suspensioner escape!! He might very well drive AGAIN!! Did I mention he is suspended for PARKING TICKETS!! God, he might park ILLEGALLY too!! Oh, the HORROR!!”

I slump back on the bench and see an industrial-looking bucket on the floor for the first time. Gross! It’s a puke bucket for drunks. With the smell in the room it was cleaned recently. I look back up and two of them are watching me, while maintaining a conversation. It all seems to come together. This is an observation room of some kind. They are watching to see if I am crazy or drunk or prone to puking. I wonder for a moment if I should give them a show. I quickly abort the plan when I realize anything crazy I could do in the room would involve harming myself. There’s no one around to lunge at or slap. I’d have to tear my hair out or throw myself at the door and that would hurt. I could upend the puke bucket on my head and hurl myself around the room in a crazy dance of injustice, but that’s just gross. I opt for pouting instead.

Bored with my pouting, they buzz me out of the room. The door opens by itself and I turn around to watch it shut again. For some reason, the machinery reminds me of a car wash. No one guides me to the next room. There are markings on the floor and a robotic voice telling me to advance to room two. This next room looks exactly like the waiting area at the DMV. I sit in one of the uncomfortably-close connected chairs and a TV buzzes on. I think vaguely that this woman is going to tell me that Big Brother is watching, but she says: “You are in the custody of the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department...” I watch in bemusement. It’s an instructional video that is here to give me some helpful tips about my stay. I watch it in its’ entirety about 6 times. My favorites scene involves how disorderly conduct is handled if you are given an orange jumpsuit and made to stay. The example they use is of two frumpy white guys playing checkers. One guy is a really poor sport and tips the board over and tries to bitch-slap the winner. He is quickly taken down by the burly guards and hauled away, struggling. I think: “Dude, it’s CHECKERS!“ They show him looking particularly mournful, with an “I learned my lesson the hard way” look in solitary confinement. It also talks about how to make your bed and that you are expected to line up promptly at 7AM.

After six viewings of this I am called by an electronic voice to a window. There is a surprisingly friendly woman behind bullet-proof glass and a speaker box. I am told to stand on a yellow mark on the floor. I do as I’m told and am certain a trap door will swallow me and I will go shrieking down a slide to the dungeon when I see her reach for a button. I realize that it is picture time. I know I’m looking tore-down. A few months back I bleached my hair and the orangey-yellow is darkening badly at the roots. I am also wearing a t-shirt that is a shade of gray that makes me look particularly pasty and dirty, loose khakis. I look like a white-trash petty thief who chugs Miller High Life and attends Monster Truck Rallies. Well, a gay one anyway with bad hair.

“Smile!” the picture-lady chirps and I know she is only happy and bubbly because there is bullet-proof glass between us. I don’t smile. I see the camera flicker and then she asks me what I am doing there. She looks up my information and looks vaguely horrified when she sees how many parking tickets I have. She tells me I will be given a court date. After a few minutes, a machine buzzes on her side of the glass and a thick, hospital-like bracelet prints out with my name, race, sex, height, weight, birth-date and horrid-looking picture I just took. There is also a bar-code that the cops can scan if I am mutilated beyond recognition at some point during my stay.

Another door buzzes open and I am told to sit in one of the many open rooms along the wall on the left. On the right are two cops huddling around a computer screen chuckling and whispering. I’m pretty sure they are looking at porno sites.

I go stir-crazy in the empty room. There is literally no one else around and the door is wide open. All there is to do is sit on a bench and stare at the floor. It isn't even big enough to lie down on. I count the tiles. I multiply them. I figure out their square roots. I am so bored I want to fake a seizure just to see what will happen. I also consider pissing or shitting my pants just to see what they will do and how they will handle it.

I eventually begin to plot the cops’ deaths in elaborate detail. People who aren’t as bored as me don’t deserve to live. Though we are essentially trapped in the same area, they have the whole INTERNET to entertain them and I see this as grossly unfair.

I decide the cute one on the left needs to be slapped around and toyed with sexually just because I am so bored. Then I need to shove his head in the puke bucket from the glass room and bang it against a brick wall until he lapses into a coma. The other, less-cute one needs to have the computer monitor smashed on his head so that his brains cook and fry. I suppress a manic giggle at the picture.

Partway through, with mounting horror, I realize there is a big wall clock over by the cops, too. I watch the second hand sweep. Two hours go by as I watch the clock. Every fucking second of two hours.

Nonchalantly, one of the cops leaves the porn, gets up and brings me over to a big machine that will either chop my fingers off or take my fingerprints electronically. A powerful light swoops by and I feel a vague radioactive sensation. Then I have to wait another 45 minutes for them to run my prints and make sure I’m not a psycho killer of some kind. I am a gibbering lunatic by the time they direct me through a door at the end of the room and shut it behind me without giving me any explanation.

It is a narrow, dimly-lit corridor. I walk down it and see that it twists and turns until I feel like maybe I am in a maze. I finally round one last corner and there is a desk with a dour-looking old guy sitting at it. He pushes me into the smallest phone booth on earth and I call Math-girl. I give her the information about paying my bail which is conveniently stenciled above the phone. I tell her I will call her when I am out and thank her profusely.

After the phone call I am asked if I have trouble with any certain type of people. “Republicans, religious zealots and really bored Lauderdale cops,” I mutter. I don’t appreciate the nasty look I am given at that so I decide the man who asked me must be all of those things. I am just telling the truth, after all. I realize dimly that he is trying to get me to admit I am racist or homophobic or that I don’t get along with Indians.

I am led to the final room which has two angry black guys in it and a crest-fallen looking gay guy. I listen to the two black guys cuss about how the guards are just being assholes by passing them over every time they release people. I sit down near the gay guy and wonder if he is Mr. Right. You never know, after all. What a story to tell our adopted children some day! How daddy and daddy met in jail!!

I eventually get the guy to talk and he tells me how he stole all the money from the Subway he was closing down one night and got a bunch of drugs with the money. Then, very high, he went to his bosses house and robbed him too, for good measure. This would be hot if a butch-looking guy were telling me, but this guy looks like a drag queen with no make-up. I’M butcher than him and that’s saying a lot. Mr. Wrong drones on about how he’s going to be put away for a long, long time. “Right on, sister,” I think.

Halfway through the two and a half hours I am in this room, the room gradually fills up. At the maximum there are about 6 of us. One of them is a horrified-looking suburban Asian guy and a smart-ass druggie that I instantly take a liking to. He’s in for parking tickets, too, and pretty pissed-off about it. We talk for awhile about getting high and then watch the black guys give the guards the finger and pound on the glass.

Eventually, a cop opens the door and stands there with a clipboard. He’s a total smart-ass. He sees my eager look and refers to me as “You with the bad dye job!” I tell Mr. Wrong that it was nice talking to him and the cop says, suggestively: “What do you mean by that?”

He makes us all line up in the hallway outside the cell. He walks up and down the row for a minute. He sighs, dramatically, thee put-upon cop facing the dregs of humanity once again, shakes his head and says: “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you punks. You’re all going downtown!!” I roll my eyes and the other guys murmur about bad jokes and dead cops under their breath. The Asian guy doesn’t get it and whimpers: “PLEASE, sir!! You don’t understand! There’s been a mistake! Please!”

When we line up at the window to be given our belongings back, I realize that you can see through this window to the other window where the whole process began. When the person at our window walks away for a minute, the smart-ass druggie goads a sobbing suburban girl who is at the beginning of the process. “Oh man, you’re at the START!? You’re gonna be here a fuckin MONTH, man! Get comfortable!!” The girl shrieks in despair and sinks to her knees to pray or something. I snicker as I put my shoes back on and take my check for $1.00.

It FELT like a month, anyway.